Guiding Online Graduate Special Education Candidates Through E-Performance Assessments and edTPA

As online teacher preparation programs continue to grow, guiding the process for edTPA candidates can pose varying challenges. As such, teacher preparation programs must be equipped to provide guidance to online candidates as they complete the actionable items required for edTPA. Provided from the field supervisors' perspective, this chapter outlines the current process Western Carolina University has in place to provide effective clinical and teacher candidate experiences for students in their online program. The purpose of this chapter provides guided structure for graduate special education teachers pursing initial licensure through an online masters' program. This chapter will include 1) the challenges of guiding online students through the e-portfolio process, 2) an exploration of the provided structure for the teacher candidates to fulfill the requirements of edTPA, as well as 3) recommendations for teacher preparation programs and teacher candidate readiness in the practice and application of e-performance assessments and edTPA.

OFLEBO, an online teacher-training programme for teachers of French in Botswana as an example of professionalisation

Technology has influenced not only our everyday lives, but our education systems and the opportunities for teacher development. The introduction of information and communications technology has presented new training platforms to respond to the needs of the workforce. While traditional institutions have greatly impacted teachers, there are now other viable outlets through which many of the required 21st century skills, such as professionalism, can be satisfied. Our project OFLEBO is one such example, an online training tool targeting the teaching of oral skills for in-service teachers of the French language in Botswana. This area was chosen because of the teachers’ admission on finding teaching oral skills a challenging task. This paper therefore aims to study the professionalisation of teachers through the OFLEBO project. Professionalisation as a process is continuous, and practice is its focus, therefore the aim is to inspire the evolution of classroom practices concerning the teaching of oral skills.

Online Teacher Professional Development in Canada: A Review of the Research

This paper presents findings from a systematic review of 11 studies examining online teacher professional development (oTPD) in Canada between 2000-2020. A thematic content analysis of the articles led to four main themes associated with research on oTPD: 1. knowledge exchange; 2. reflective practice; 3. multifaceted learning opportunities; and 4. just-in-time support. The study contexts, research methods, and other relevant study characteristics are also reviewed and discussed. The results shed light on the current research trends on oTPD in Canada and highlight the need for continued research in this area. Data from diverse research methods across Canada’s geographical regions can contribute to greater insight into the types of oTPD occurring in Canada and how various platforms and professional development opportunities can best support teachers’ professional learning.

Designing for Framing in Online Teacher Education: Supporting Teachers’ Attending to Student Thinking in Video Discussions of Classroom Engineering

Participating in discussions of classroom video can support teachers to attend to student thinking. Central to the success of these discussions is how teachers interpret the activity they are engaged in—how teachers frame what they are doing. In asynchronous online environments, negotiating framing poses challenges, given that interactions are not in real time and often require written text. We present findings from an online course designed to support teachers to frame video discussions as making sense of student thinking. In an engineering pedagogy course designed to emphasize responsiveness to students’ thinking, we documented shifts in teachers’ framing, with teachers more frequently making sense of, rather than evaluating, student thinking later in the course. These findings show that it is possible to design an asynchronous online course to productively engage teachers in video discussions and inform theory development in online teacher education.

EFL teachers’ online teacher professional development experiences amidst the COVID-19 pandemic: Practices and perceptions

This research investigates the EFL teachers’ practices and perceptions of online teacher professional development (OTPD) experiences to improve their competencies for teaching online language learning amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. 42 EFL teachers voluntarily became the participants through invitation. All participants were requested to give responses on a questionnaire. Eight participants were then invited for an individual semi-structured interview. Descriptive statistics were employed to analyze the questionnaire data, whilst qualitative coding was used to analyse the interview data. The results reveal many important findings regarding EFL teachers’ practices and perceptions of experiencing OTPD amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings are beneficial to help OTPD designers and providers, policy makers, and school leaders provide OTPD which best fits EFL teachers’ needs, preferences, and teaching contexts.